Hair has no value once you’ve cut it off your head unless your donating a big piece of it to cancer patients. However, if you’re trimming your split ends, it becomes waste, or so we thought. Those hair trims could contribute to saving and cleaning oceans.
A barbershop chain in Sydney is using customers’ old hair to help save the environment. The Grand Royal Barbers hairdressers have shops in Surry Hills, CBD, and Darlinghurst. All their shops are leading the way into sustainable hairdressing with a greener future. In addition to reusing the hair, Grand Royal Barbers recycles all razors, all plastic bottles, and the foil used when dying hair.
The Grand Royal Barbers are pioneers among their ecological commitment. After extensive research at the Sydney University of Technology, the technique of using hair for oil spill cleaning was confirmed. Grand Royal Barbers are the first hairdressers that use this technology.
Grand Royal Barbers owner, Maria Dillon, said:
There’s so much plastic in this world with plastic islands everywhere in the ocean. They’ve been polluted enough and I just want it to be around for my children.
The staff at the barbershop chain collect all the clients’ cut hair, then donate it to institutions that make stuffed stockings, which are used to absorb oil during oil spills. The company collects about seven buckets of hair per week before it’s picked up by Sustainable Salons. Hair is an ideal natural alternative to traditional dispersants used to fight oil spills.
Masters student Rebecca Pagnucco, explaining how the process works:
Hair is a natural biosorbent. It’s been shown to adsorb three to nine times its weight in oil. Your hair gets oily and greasy – the oil basically is stuck to the hair fibers. By a similar method, it would stick to other oils, such as crude oil. Hair can also be reused several times without a significant decrease in its ability to absorb oil.
Customers play a fundamental role in the company’s eco-sustainable scheme because they pay a $2 (£1.05) levy to help cover the cost. Dillion has noticed many barbers and salons jumping on board with the sustainable idea since their scheme rolled out successfully.
Previously In The Philippines
Over 15,000 prisoners at a maximum-security prison in Manila shaved their heads and chests to donate hair to help clean up the worst oil spill that the Philippines ever had. On Aug. 11, 2006, Over 50,000 gallons of industrial fuel leaked from a tanker that sank off the central island of Guimaras. Residents of Guimaras had to evacuate due to health risks.
Vergilio Santos, who is serving a murder sentence, said (after shaving his head):
We’re collecting plenty of hair to send to Guimaras to solve the oil spill problem.
Inmate Bongbong Acoleds said:
It needs to be stopped, and they said it could be stopped by hair.
The Coast Guard put chicken feathers and human hair in sacks tied to bamboo shoots as barriers along the coastlines of the 46 affected villages on Guimaras and in Iloilo province.
History Of The Idea To Use Hair For Oil Spills
Phil McCrory, an Alabama-based hairdresser, was watching coverage of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. He wondered if hair could help clean up oil, as he was previously noticing that otters’ fur gets saturated with oil.
He gathered five pounds of hair from his shop, then stuffed it in a pair of his wife’s pantyhose, tied the legs together into a ring, and put it in his son’s mini-pool with oil. With the help of scientists, McCrory discovered that hair doesn’t soak up the oil, but the oil clings to thousands of tiny scales on hair shafts.
In 1993, he decided to apply for a patent on a device filled with hair to absorb oil from water, then finally he got awarded the patent in 1995. Then in 1998, NASA engineers did further testing and proved that hair would indeed clean up oil.
